US-Iraq/war/invasion

This page is a seed article. You can help Issuepedia water it: make a request to expand a given page and/or donate to help give us more writing-hours!

This page is about the United States Invasion of Iraq, which took place during George W. Bush's presidential administration.

the President he's got his war folks don't know just what it's for no one gives us rhyme or reason you have one doubt they call it treason - Roberta Flack, 1969 "Compared to What"

Reference

• Wikipedia
• Iraq editorials at Salon.com
• AfterDowningStreet.org: "nonpartisan coalition ...[working]... to pressure both Congress and the media to investigate whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war"

Effects

• 2006-03-20 Top Ten Catastrophes of the Third Year of American Iraq
• 2005-07-18 Invasion was boost for Al Qaeda

News Articles

• 2006-06-07 Officer says he won’t fight in ‘unlawful’ Iraq war
• 2005-11-17 Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania calls for a change of direction
• 2005-09-19 $1 billion missing from Iraq's defence ministry

Reports

• 2004-09-29 Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi reports from Baghdad

Opinionated Very Brief Summary

• Got rid of Saddam, but resulted in a very expensive quagmire and harmed global opinion of America
• The current occupation of Iraq, with no timetable (much less a plan) for exit, is an example of an endless crisis

Other Opinions

• 2006-08-10 The Guns Of August by Richard Holbrooke
• 2006-07-23 In Iraq, Military Forgot Lessons of Vietnam: also makes some comparisons with the Balkans
• 2006-07-17 Iraq's Reconstruction a Boondoggle by Design by Joshua Holland, AlterNet
• 2005-12-01 Lying about the War: "truth became the first casualty in their campaign to whip up support."
• 2003-01-21 One of the More Nauseating Images by Harold Pinter

David Brin

From http://www.davidbrin.com/neocons.html :

• Over a thousand Americans lost, with more dying almost daily and no end in sight.
• Uncounted (and secret) numbers of Iraqi civilian deaths.
• Scandals; poorly supervised thugs ruining our reputation for decent behavior.
• A Western Alliance in shambles.
• Relentless lies; intervention justified by fabricated evidence reminiscent of Tonkin Gulf.
• Plummeting readiness levels — our military is being used-up.
• Utterly divisive of American public (possibly a desired goal), repeating the social effects of Vietnam (Editor's note: further enhancing Bush's existing divisiveness)
• Clever incarceration tricks overused as bludgeons, wrecking credibility and undermining due process.
• Incompetent preparation and handling of the aftermath, featuring rapid deterioration of political, economic and social life in Iraq
• Worldwide acceptance of US moral leadership plummeting.
• And the fundamental strategic outcome — provoking a radicalized Islam, further stirred by Saudi-funded Al Jazeera Network and Saudi-funded religious schools, from Morocco to Mindanao, threatening a pan-Islamic coalescence into Jihad mentality for the first time in a thousand years.